Thank you for the reviews!
Gosh, I really do enjoy making Chuck a wily little bitch in this story.
Beta'd by my knight in shining armor, paradorx~
Raleigh squeezed his eyes shut. If he ignored it, it would stop. That was the way phone calls worked.
His phone, plugged in to charge and lying on his side table, went silent for a few blissful moments before it buzzed loudly again. Groaning, Raleigh pulled it close and squinted through the blinding light at the picture flashing on the screen. Chuck flipping him off. Fitting.
He pressed answer. "I hate you," he said.
"Yeah I know. I need you to cover morning detention for me. Football practice and everything."
Raleigh took the phone away from his face to see the time and couldn't hold back a loud, grating groan. He was a morning person by nature, but in his mind 5 AM still counted as night.
He brought the phone back to his ear in time to catch Chuck's comment, "I hope I didn't catch you mid-wank." He didn't sound particularly bothered.
"No, I was sleeping." Raleigh's voice was dark as he swung his legs out of bed. "Can't you get anyone else?"
"You can get somebody else," Chuck replied. "Outta my hands, now. Cheers." He hung up and Raleigh swore.
He got ready, shuffling around in the sharp lights of his house while the outside world was still dark and peaceful. Coffee. Toast. Pants. Shirt. He tossed a sweater and a pair of jeans into his bag and scribbled a note to Yancy to drop it off in his classroom once he got to school. As he slipped out through the garage he stuck the note to the windshield of Yancy's car and put his bag in the trunk.
Then, with his breath puffing out in a vaporized cloud, he ran to school.
Raleigh passed through the office—basically deserted, not even Tendo was in yet—and found a key to shop class and a roster of detention-assigned students in his inbox. He found a scrap piece of paper, scribbled "I hate you" on it, and shoved it in Chuck's box. The jerk had planned this ever since he had left the school the night before, planning on giving Raleigh no time to refuse.
He was still in his sweatpants and exercise shirt—some jog-a-thon thing that Yancy had roped him into several years ago; it was faded and torn at the neck—when he got to the shop class and stopped in his tracks.
Roughly twenty students—a huge amount for any detention, let alone an early morning one—were waiting for him outside. Most of them were well-dressed and made-up girls, giggling to each other under their breath. When they spotted Raleigh approaching from the faculty offices, they stopped and stood silently, looks of confusion clear on their face.
Keenly aware that he smelled like sweat, Raleigh unlocked the door and led them all inside, directing them to pick seats.
"At the end of the period you can come up here and initial on your name to show that you served your detention," he said, and placed the roster on Chuck's battered desk. The kids all pulled out books or homework and began to work silently, the girls with pouts and disappointment. Raleigh rummaged through Chuck's desk for a lack of anything better to do and came up with football plays, a bunch of dog treats, and a DVD box set of Star Trek: The Original Series, which he stored away for possible future blackmail.
Twenty minutes into an hour of detention and he was dead bored and more than a little pissed at Chuck for roping him into this. He began to lazily check out the students in the room, again noticing how a great amount of them seemed to be very disappointed girls, who were now whispering to one another under their breaths. Something Chuck had said the day before sprung to the front of his mind. Chuck's all girl-class.
Raleigh stood up and walked around, casually looking over shoulders at work being done or books being read, and caught a girl hiding her phone underneath the table, a picture of Chuck's backside on the screen as she showed it to the girl sharing the table with her. Raleigh tightened his mouth and returned to Chuck's desk, leaning against it.
"Can I have your attention, please?" he asked, crossing his arms. Twenty sets of eyes met his.
"If you weren't assigned a detention by a teacher, please raise your hand," he said, speaking cautiously. Fifteen kids raised their hands—all the pretty, made-up girls with disappointed expressions. "If you are currently holding up your hand," Raleigh continued, "please leave."
The girls stood up glumly and filed out in a dismal line. Raleigh surveyed the remaining kids.
"I'm gonna be honest with you," he said with a sigh. "Mr. Hansen is a dick and made me wake up early for this and I'm not happy."
One of the kids nodded. "Sounds like him."
Raleigh motioned towards them while leaning back on Chuck's desk. "I'm guessing that he's the one who assigned you all detentions?" They nodded.
Raleigh was deep in thought for a moment. "Okay. Screw him, I'm letting you go early. Go… take a nap in the library or something." They wasted no time in packing up and leaving. Raleigh collected the detention roster and locked up the room, roughly shoving all of Chuck's crap into his inbox in the office, which now sported a barely awake Tendo Choi.
"Morning," Raleigh said to him, standing in front of his desk.
Tendo looked up at him. "No," he said, and punctuated the statement by chugging an entire mug of coffee, which he placed on the top ledge of his desk and picked up the next of three full mugs that were lined up beside it.
After rapping his knuckles on the ledge of Tendo's desk he left, telling from the shut door that Yancy wasn't in yet.
"Take a shower!" Tendo shouted at him as he left. "You stink!"
"Good morning, Mr. Choi!" Raleigh shouted back, and reached out a hand to pull open the blinds on one bank of windows. Bright morning sunlight burst out, hitting Tendo's desk like a beacon. There was the sound of Tendo hitting the floor and roaring for Raleigh's head as he finally exited the offices.
One thing that Raleigh hated was putting on gross clothes again after showering. He winced and walked tenderly from the locker rooms to his class, feeling the crust of dry sweat rub against fresh skin. The brisk early-morning air clung to his damp hair and drifted down his back, making him shiver.
His classroom was unlocked and he propped the door open, finding his bag inside on his desk. Yancy had left him a note on top:
I'm your brother not your delivery boy
Raleigh chuckled and pinned the note to a corkboard with similar other threats and grievances that Yancy had passed along to him throughout the years. It was a small bit of personalization that he brought to his classroom, which he kept bare out of the inability to really enjoy decorating than an actual quest to be boring. Along with his note-board he had various printouts of photos from his years abroad, and many of Yancy as well during his year in Hong Kong. They were all in black and white, which ruined any welcoming effect they may have had.
Without pausing to consider the open door—it was early morning, nearly an hour before school would start—he gratefully stripped off his sweat-stained shirt and bundled it around his hands, breathing a sigh of relief. He picked up his clean under-shirt from the bag and buried his face in the cleanliness for a moment.
When he looked up, his eyes landed randomly at the open door—and straight across the hall, to another open door, completely even with his—where Ms. Mori stood in the doorway of her classroom, looking at him with wide eyes.
She blinked a few times while he stood there, froze, shirtless and slightly glistening from his shower, and then set her shoulders before walking across the hall to him. He struggled to untangle his hands from his shirt before she got there, but only succeeded in forcing himself into a pair of cotton handcuffs.
Ms. Mori stood in the doorway. "Mr. Becket?" she asked.
"Please, call me Raleigh," he replied. "Good morning."
"Good morning." She sounded amused, a slight smile on his mouth. "I was only wondering if you could meet me at lunch to go over the school's grading system… it's a bit strange to me."
The grading system that Raleigh himself only barely comprehended. "Sure," he replied quickly. His hands were still trapped in his shirt and he didn't know of a way to disentangle them and get dressed with her standing there and not look awkward at the same time.
With a small little dip of a bow she turned and walked straight across the hall into her classroom.
Raleigh freed his hands and leaned out of the doorway to talk to her again, calling out, "Uh, I'll bring lunch!" he said. She flashed a smile over her shoulder at him and then shut her door. He was busy navigating his shirt, too busy to notice how she appeared in the window of her classroom, looking his bare torso up and down.
He did look up, arms halfway into his sleeves, when there was a loud gasp at the throat of the hallway, where a group of fifteen or so girls—the ones he had booted from detention and left to wander the school—stood, staring at his bare chest with open mouths. One of them had a phone out and he could have sworn he heard the sound of a shutter engaging as he ducked back inside, struggling into his shirt, face bright red.
Raleigh skipped the food line by teacher privilege—a few of his older students called him out on it and he shushed them with a look, and he had two cardboard containers of food balanced in one hand as he avoided Chuck's room and the Math and Science buildings. Ms. Mori's door was propped open and she sat at the computer, looking blankly at the screen with her fingers resting on the keys.
"Ms. Mori?" Raleigh asked, knocking on the wall with his free hand. She jumped a little and turned to him. She stood and straightened the sweater that she wore.
"Raleigh," she greeted him. "Please, call me Mako."
He nodded and couldn't keep the smile off of his face. He set down the lunches on her desk and there was some shuffling as she made him take her chair and she tugged one from a desk closer for herself. She brushed against him a few times and Raleigh wished that he wasn't wearing long sleeves. He started up the grading system and watched from his peripherals as she began to drink from one of two juice boxes he had gotten for them.
"The grading system is actually pretty new," he explained as he entered her information into the login screen and waited for it to load. "It took us all a while to get used to it. Newt joked that we'd need new degrees in computer science to get it all down."
She laughed a little and he continued. "It really makes me regret grabbing physical education as a minor."
"I'm not much better off," she replied, "and I have a minor in engineering."
He raised one eyebrow. "That's impressive." All side talk stopped as he talked her through the entry system for grades and the dates and times that she needed to enter and submit them by, setting her up with a calendar on the program to keep her in check.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing with one hand at the screen while the other rested on his forearm. His breath caught a little and he looked at her, her face so close, eyes not focused on what she was pointed at but at her. After a moment he coughed.
"Um, that's the attendance section," he explained. "It is actually too complicated to use, so we stick to rosters on paper."
She nodded and withdrew both of her arms. He wanted to find something else that would catch her attention, make her get close to him, but he came up empty.
The bell to signal the last five minutes of lunch rang, and he had to say his goodbyes in a rush as her next class piled in, chatting in a mix of English and Japanese that was actually impressive for a second day of class.
In his classroom, he left the door open as he lectured, able to look out at any time and catch her doing the same across the hallway. Once they met eyes and looked away, Raleigh losing track in his speech and stuttering, much to the amusement of his students.
"Rayleigh!" Chuck flagged him down after school as he was locking his classroom. "Glad I caught you. I just wanted to say thanks for whatever it was you said to those girls who filled up detention on purpose."
It took Raleigh a minute. "You knew?"
"Hell yeah I knew," Chuck scoffed, "why do you think I called you to sub in? Anyways, whatever it was you told them worked. Today they weren't snapping pics of my ass! They've moved onto greener pastures, I reckon." He clapped Raleigh on the shoulder. "I owe you one!" Chuck walked away, Max happily tottering off next to him, unaware that he served Satan incarnate.
Once he was gone, Raleigh began to hit his head against the door to his classroom. He then headed towards the nurse's office.
"Stop laughing!"
"I can't… oh my God, I can't even…" Yancy clutched at his chest and cried with laughter as Raleigh, steaming, reclined on the medical cot with a murderous look in his eye. Yancy wheezed, controlling himself for a few moments. He looked at his brother. "At least you know the answer now."
"The answer to what?" Raleigh asked sharply. He felt like hitting something.
Yancy could barely contain himself long enough to say the entire sentence. "Now you know that you're hot." He exploded into another fit of laughter and fished out his cell phone. "Oh God, I'm tweeting about this."
"Yancy, I know where you sleep."
"Alright, alright," Yancy panted, holding out his hands in surrender and dropping his phone to his desk. "But, like, Jesus, Raleigh. Your life sucks."
Raleigh frowned and settled back on the cot, looking up at the foam ceiling tiles. "No shit, Yancy Drew. Tell me something I don't know."
"Well, for one," Yancy pointed out. "I'm not your therapist… and that's not a therapy couch." It was an old argument.
"It's a bed!" Raleigh burst out, frustrated. "For the purpose of lying down!"
"It's a medical cot," Yancy exclaimed. "For the purpose of treating injured children." He sighed tiredly. "On second thought, maybe you do belong there."
Raleigh dragged his hands down his face and looked at his brother. Yancy sobered up, leaning forward in his chair with his chin propped in one hand. "Raleigh, I know that I'm your big brother and I'm supposed to support you, and on top of all that I'm also qualified to open up the neck of a child with a bee allergy with a pen and an X-acto knife—which makes me an intimidating force—but I'm not a miracle worker."
"Whatever," Raleigh said, his least favorite word in the entirety of the English language, but it fit for the situation.
"Come on, your day must have had some kind of bright side," Yancy pressed. "Focus on that and not the fact that you are now the object of adoration for a cluster of hormonal teenage girls."
He knew that Yancy was baiting him, but Raleigh didn't bite. He closed his eyes and focused instead on the touch of Mako's hand on his arm, the curve of her nose and the lay of her hair across her neck.
What a bright side.
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